”„Animation is revolutionizing both the way we tell stories on film and how we perceive the world around us. In this inspired approach to the art of animation, Karen McCann reduces the entire process to its essentials and takes us on a fascinating journey to show how a plethora of animation techniques using materials as diverse as clay, 3-D imagery and hand-drawings can produce radically different ways of telling stories and representing the world around us.

In its sheer ”„unreality' animation can achieve effects impossible to reproduce by ordinary film-making techniques and takes us into a virtual world of unfettered imagination. With its ability to depict dream-like images and fantasies, indeed to challenge the way in which our consciousness perceives the ”„real' world around us, the world of animation often leads us into a deeper plane of ”„reality' that explores the working of the human mind itself.

Karen McCann's excellent guide to how animators structure their time and ideas to maximum effect will surely be essential reading for any aspiring animator, but for the general reader also the book is a revelation, making us appreciate that animation is not simply cartoons and computer graphics, but an art form whose subtleties have often been all too little appreciated. I warmly recommend this book to all those who wish to learn about the thought-processes that go into creating this truly unique art form.'